The present invention pertains to an eating utensil with a spoon shell fastened to a handle.
Eating utensils of this type have been known for a long time. Those with a handle and with a spoon shell fastened thereto are used especially in the form of a soup spoon for eating liquid or small particulate food. The drawback of these prior-art eating utensils is that larger pieces of food, e.g., pieces of meat, cannot be reduced in size with the spoon shell. Even if such reduction in size is possible in the case of relatively soft pieces of food, a second eating utensil, e.g., in the form of a fork, is needed to hold this piece of food during division. Dividing such a food with a conventional soup spoon is thus possible with difficulty only, especially with one hand, so that especially handicapped people with only one usable hand are usually dependent on the assistance of a second person to reduce in size pieces of food.
Various eating utensils with multiple functions to enable such persons to reduce in size pieces of food independently have become known.
For example, an eating utensil that can be used with one hand for one-armed and handicapped people (DE 86 19 103.9 U1) has been known, which has a fork and a knife arranged on one side of the fork, which said knife is displaceable in the longitudinal direction of the fork and is mounted tiltably around an axis extending approximately at right angles to the edge of the knife against spring pressure by loading the back of the knife. The knife and the fork are mounted in a common, grip-like sheath. The fork can be turned around between a folded-out position projecting from the sheath in the longitudinal direction of the sheath and a folded-in position located adjacent to the outside of the sheath, while the knife is displaceable between an extended position in which it is extended from the sheath and a withdrawn position in which it is withdrawn into the sheath, and it is accommodated in the sheath. This fork and knife combination shall enable handicapped persons to independently reduce in size a piece of food locked with the fork by extending the blade of the knife and a relative movement. This means that the user must displace the blade of the knife in the axial direction and must also perform the tilting movement simultaneously by pressing the back of the knife, e.g., with a finger. This type of use is extremely complicated and is consequently suitable for the one-hand operation of the fork and knife combination only conditionally.
A fork-and-knife eating utensil for one-handed people, in which a fork body is arranged on a handle, has likewise been known from DE 27 49 685 A1. An axially movable knife body of an approximately U-shaped design, whose fork-side front edge is designed as a knife blade, is arranged on this handle. A piece of food, which is held by means of the fork body, shall be xe2x80x9cpunched outxe2x80x9d by the forward movement of the knife body by means of this eating utensil. The handling of this prior-art eating utensil is also extremely difficult, because, especially in order to ensure the complete cutting through of the piece of food, the handle must be held with the knife body at right angles to the support so that the knife body can indeed cut the piece of food completely with its blade. Since the knife body has an essentially U-shaped design, this eating utensil must be brought into contact with the food, tuned at least twice by 180xc2x0, to completely separate a piece of food, so that complete cutting through is extremely complicated.
In another eating utensil for the handicapped (DE 85 27 734.7 U1), a fork, with which a cutting device is associated, is likewise provided on a grip part. The cutting device has a knife arranged in the area of the prongs of the fork with a blade extending at right angles to the prongs of the fork, wherein the said knife is longitudinally displaceable in the direction of the prongs of the fork and is mounted pivotably. To facilitate the cutting movement proper, an electric motor, which mediates a cutting pivoting movement to the knife via a gear mechanism, is also provided in the housing. Thus, a piece of food picked up by the fork can be cut through by means of this eating utensil at least on one side by the axial displacement of the knife and the simultaneously active electric motor. However, depending on the shape of the piece of food, this eating utensil must be brought into contact with the piece of food several times in order to perform a complete separation. Furthermore, energy supply is always necessary for the electric motor in this eating utensil, which has the disadvantage, especially in the case of a battery-operated eating utensil, that replacement batteries must always be present in order to maintain the ability of this eating utensil to function and that the batteries increase the weight and make the eating utensil bulky.
The primary object of the present invention is to design an eating utensil with a spoon shell fastened to a handle such that it can be used with one hand and that a cutting function can also be performed with it in a simple manner to reduce in size pieces of food.
According to the present invention a spoon shell and the handle being designed as two-part pieces and by a first spoon shell part and a second spoon shell part and forming a first handle shaft and a second handle shaft, respectively, and by the first spoon shell part being rigidly connected to the first handle shaft and by the second spoon shell part being rigidly connected to the second handle shaft, and by the handle shafts being connected to one another by a scissor hinge and being movable against one another in a scissor-like manner, and by the two spoon shell parts having cutting edges cooperating in a scissor-like manner.
The design according to the present invention makes available an eating utensil with which the functions of division, picking up of the food and moving it to the mouth can be performed by handicapped people in a simple and reliable manner. Using the eating utensil according to the present invention, a handicapped person can thus reduce in size pieces of food and eat them independently with one hand only. The scissor-like movement of the two spoon shell parts makes available an extremely simple cutting method, in which it is not necessary to fix the piece of food by means of a second utensil in any way. The design of the eating utensil according to the present invention thus corresponds approximately to a pair of scissors, whose scissor blades are designed as spoon shell parts.
Due to the scissor hinge being arranged in the vicinity of the edge of the spoon shell it is possible to apply extremely strong shearing forces or cutting forces during the reduction in size of pieces of food, which makes the eating utensil according to the present invention particularly suitable even for people, e.g., handicapped children, who do not have a correspondingly strong force in their hand.
Handiness is further improved by the spreading spring provided, by which the two handle shafts and spoon shell parts can be spread apart. The arrangement of the spreading spring between the two handle shafts makes possible the extremely simple assembly as well as variable design of the spreading spring.
Due to the spoon shell being divided lengthwise approximately in the middle, the eating utensil according to the present invention can also be used in a simple manner as a gripping tong, as a result of which its user-friendliness is considerably improved and its applicability is expanded.
As an alternative, the spoon shell may also be divided along a ring line, so that an edge ring closed in itself is created with the first handle shaft and an inner shell part is connected to the second handle shaft. Due to this embodiment, the cutting edge proper is located during the reduction in size of a piece of food essentially in a plane extending in parallel to the edge of the spoon, so that while the spoon shell is closed in a scissor-like manner and is held horizontally, the piece of food cut off automatically comes to lie on the spoon and can be moved immediately to the mouth. An extremely simple and easily handling is achieved due to this embodiment as well.
Due to the ability of the spoon shell parts to be locked in their closed position by means of a securing element arranged on a handle shaft, the eating utensil according to the present invention can be safely used as a conventional one-part soup spoon with the spoon shell parts locked. Advantageous embodiments of a locking means are also disclosed.
Due to the replaceable arrangement of the handle shafts at the spoon shells, the eating utensil according to the present invention can be adapted to the individual needs of a handicapped person in a simple manner. Thus, handle shafts of different shapes and sizes can be connected to the spoon shell parts, so that the eating utensil according to the present invention can be selected optimally in a simple manner, e.g., depending on the size of the hand or the nature of the handicap of the person using it.
The cutting edge of one spoon shell part may be provided with a sealing strip extending under the cutting edge of the other spoon shell part, so that the eating utensil according to the present invention can also be used to take up liquid foods, e.g., a soup.
The various features of novelty which characterize the invention are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure. For a better understanding of the invention, its operating advantages and specific objects attained by its uses, reference is made to the accompanying drawings and descriptive matter in which a preferred embodiment of the invention is illustrated.